Arthur Sulzberger, Ex-New York Times Publisher, Dies at 86

New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger stands in front of a printing press with a copy of his newspaper on June 30, 1977. Photographer: Dirck Halstead/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Arthur O. “Punch” Sulzberger, who
in three decades as publisher of the New York Times helped
revamp the newspaper with special sections, diversified the
company’s business and fought the U.S. government’s attempt to
halt the paper’s printing of the Pentagon Papers, has died. He
was 86.

Sulzberger, who had been ill with Parkinson’s disease, died
today at his home in Southampton, New York, the Times reported.

“Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from
a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the
press,” Arthur Sulzberger Jr., his son and successor as
chairman and publisher, said in a statement. “His inspired
leadership in landmark cases such as New York Times v. Sullivan
and the Pentagon Papers helped to expand access to critical
information and to prevent government censorship and
intimidation.”

Sulzberger surprised skeptics within his family and at the
Times by transforming the newspaper into a publicly owned media
company with holdings in magazines, television, radio stations
and newspapers in the U.S. and Europe.

“Over the course of more than 30 years, Arthur helped
transform the New York Times and secure its status as one of the
most successful and respected newspapers in the world,”
President Barack Obama said in statement. “He was a firm
believer in the importance of a free and independent press --one
that isn’t afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power
accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told.”

‘New Level’

At Sulzberger’s retirement party in 1997, Katharine Graham,
the former Washington Post publisher, said “above all, he took
the quality of the product to an entirely new level.” She died
in 2001.

As publisher, Sulzberger oversaw enlargement of the weekday
Times to four-sections, the start of its national editions and
the introduction of its “Op-Ed” page, now a staple of
newspapers. The Times won 31 Pulitzer Prizes from 1963, when he
became publisher, until he retired and became chairman emeritus.

Sulzberger’s biggest decision as publisher came in June
1971, when he gave the go-ahead to print the Pentagon Papers,
the 7,000-page Defense Department report that revealed the U.S.
government had lied about its escalating involvement in Vietnam.

Court Rulings

Publishing the report set off a showdown with President
Richard Nixon’s White House, a battle the Times won when the
Supreme Court ruled the government didn’t have the right to stop
publication on national security grounds.

“Thank goodness,” Sulzberger said later. “You can only
do a few of those in a lifetime.”

The New York Times v. Sullivan case was a 1964 Supreme
Court decision that strengthened protections of the press
against libel suits brought by public figures.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger was born in New York on Feb. 5,
1926, to Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Iphigene Bertha Ochs. She
was the daughter of Adolph Ochs, who bought the near-bankrupt
Times in 1896 for $75,000. The son of German-Jewish immigrants,
Ochs was the owner of the Chattanooga Times.

When Ochs died in 1935, Iphigene’s 43-year-old husband
became the publisher. Arthur Hays Sulzberger served until 1961,
then appointed as publisher his oldest daughter Marian’s
husband, Orvil E. Dryfoos.

‘The Hapless One’

The elder Sulzberger nicknamed his only son “Punch.” (It
came from “Punch & Judy” puppets and countered his youngest
daughter’s name, Judith.) He also called him “the Hapless One”
for his mediocre record at various private schools; only later
was Punch diagnosed with the reading disorder dyslexia.

To prove his toughness, Sulzberger enlisted at 18 in the
U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. His desire to serve in
combat was thwarted when Sulzberger’s father persuaded General
Douglas MacArthur to assign Punch to a desk job in the
Philippines. Sulzberger forever resented his father’s meddling.

Sulzberger graduated from Columbia University in 1951 with
a degree in English and history, then served again in the
Marines during the Korean War until the truce was signed in
1953.

He began in journalism as a reporter at the Milwaukee
Journal, followed by stints at Times bureaus in Paris, London
and Rome. From 1955, he held midlevel posts in the business and
production departments, languishing “without a job of
substance,” his oldest sister Marian told Susan Tifft and Alec
Jones in their 1999 book “The Trust: The Private and Powerful
Family Behind The New York Times.”

Youngest Publisher

Dryfoos was publisher of the Times for only two years; he
died in 1963 of heart failure, two months after a 114-day strike
against the city’s newspapers by the printers union.

On June 20, 1963, though his father had balked at first,
Punch Sulzberger at age 37 became the youngest publisher of the
New York Times.

On being named to the post, he demonstrated the deprecating
wit that colleagues said marked his tenure.

“My sister Ruth called me after my first day as publisher
and asked me how it had gone,” he recalled, “and I said, ‘I’ve
made my first executive decision. I’ve decided not to throw
up.’”

The company’s finances were Sulzberger’s initial concern.
The Times had been loosely run as a family enterprise, seemingly
indifferent to financial discipline.

Family Control

The printers’ strike demonstrated a need to diversify
beyond a single newspaper. Selling stock to the public seemed a
logical way to raise money, although some family members were
concerned that this could in the future spark a hostile
takeover.

As a result, the company decided to create two classes of
shares, one to be traded publicly and a second to be controlled
by family members with the right to appoint members to the board
of directors. On Jan. 14, 1969, New York Times was listed on the
American Stock Exchange at $42 a share.

Family control was entrenched in 1986 when its adult
members signed a covenant forbidding descendants from selling
their super-voting shares to anyone outside the family.

In an interview the Times published on his retirement,
Sulzberger said his most momentous decision was to publish the
Pentagon Papers.

He was first told of the documents in April 1971, a month
after the newspaper obtained them from Daniel Ellsberg, a former
Defense Department researcher. The Times’s chief outside counsel
argued against publication. Sulzberger sided with the newsroom,
saying “it was the duty of the Times not to stay out of trouble
but to defend the First Amendment,” recalled James Reston, a
former Times editor, in his book “Deadline: A Memoir.”

Restraining Order

After publishing the first installment on June 13, 1971,
Sulzberger received a telegram the next day from U.S. Attorney
General John Mitchell demanding the newspaper stop publication
and return the document. Instead, the Times published the
material for a third day. Mitchell then obtained a restraining
order, which Sulzberger honored.

On June 30, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling against
the government, declaring that prior restraint wasn’t justified.
The Times continued to publish the report, winning a Pulitzer
Prize for its work.

In the 1970s, the Arab oil embargo plunged the nation into
recession, and New York City verged on bankruptcy. Rather than
retrench, Sulzberger invested in new sections to broaden the
paper’s appeal to the city’s changing demographics and its
growing suburbs.

New Sections

The daily paper grew from two parts -- one devoted to
foreign and national news, and another to metropolitan-area news
-- to four. Each weekday edition had a special section, such as
Sports on Monday, Science on Tuesday, Weekend on Friday, as well
as a new daily business section. The sections helped increase
the newspaper’s reach, advertising revenue and circulation.

Sulzberger also backed executive editor A.M. “Abe”
Rosenthal’s efforts to make the Times more readable by pushing
reporters to write with authority and to produce lighter feature
stories.

In the mid-1980s, however, Sulzberger intervened when the
newsroom under Rosenthal was wracked by dissension. Rosenthal
became a columnist and was replaced by Max Frankel. In his book
“The Times of My Life and My Life with the Times,” Frankel
said Sulzberger told him at the time:

“Make a great paper even greater. Help to break in my son
Arthur as the next publisher. Make the newsroom a happy place
again.”

‘Extremely Polite’

It was rare for Sulzberger to get so obviously involved in
the newsroom’s operation, associates said.

“Unpretentiousness is his greatest gift,” Frankel said in
a 1997 Times interview. “He was remarkably serene about letting
his subordinates do their work. His interventions were extremely
polite.”

Nor did Sulzberger disagree, overtly, with the paper’s
editorial stance. Instead, he voiced dissent by writing letters
to the paper (which it published) and that were signed “A.
Sock,” a play on his nickname.

He ended the practice in 1979 after Gail Gregg, his
daughter-in-law, wrote a rebuttal to one of his letters, ending
with the line, “Mr. Sock deserves a punch.” His identity had
been revealed, Sulzberger decided.

In 1992, Sulzberger passed the title of publisher to his
son Arthur Jr., marking the fourth generation of family
leadership.

Increased Revenue

Sulzberger’s three-decades of overseeing the Times weren’t
without missteps. In 1993, he approved acquiring the Boston
Globe for $1.1 billion; the purchase led to an $814.4 million
writedown of the company’s New England media properties in 2007.

Still, when Sulzberger became publisher in 1963, the Times’
annual sales totaled $101 million; on his retirement in 1997,
the company’s annual revenue was $2.9 billion. He also widened
the paper’s influence in 1967 by becoming a co-owner with the
Washington Post of the International Herald Tribune, now owned
solely by the Times.

Aside from being chairman emeritus, in his later years, he
also served as chairman of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art
and the Fresh Air Fund.

In addition to his son, Arthur Jr., Sulzberger had a
daughter, Karen Alden Sulzberger, from his marriage to Barbara
Grant, which ended in divorce in 1956. He had two other
daughters, Cynthia Fox Sulzberger from his marriage to Carol Fox
Sulzberger, who died in 1995, and Cathy Jean Sulzberger, who was
adopted by Sulzberger and Fox.

Sulzberger’s third wife, Allison Cowles, whom he married in
1996, died in April 2010.

He resided in Manhattan in a Fifth Avenue apartment,
according to the Times.

A line in Sulzberger’s farewell message to Times employees
on his retirement reflected the satisfaction he found in his
career: “It’s been a glorious run -- up some hills but down a
lot more.”